New living book about life: the unborn human by Deborah Lupton

THE UNBORN HUMAN, edited by Deborah Lupton:
http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/The_Unborn_Human

Open Humanities Press is pleased to announce the publication of The Unborn Human, the 24th book in its open access Living Books About Life series.

The essays in this collection, edited by Deborah Lupton of the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney, examine the unprecedented level of discursive prominence unborn human organisms – embryos and foetuses – experience in the contemporary era. Debates about the moral status of the unborn, about their claims to personhood and whether they should be treated as full human subjects, have been ongoing for a long time, particularly in areas related to religious philosophy, bioethics and abortion politics. Over the past half-century, however, these debates have become more diversified, intense and complex in response to a number of social, technological and economic changes. This Living Book about Life covers many of these facets of the unborn human. By incorporating academic articles as well as material from social, news and other digital media sites spanning historical medical, contemporary medical, sociocultural, bioethical and legal perspectives, The Unborn Human demonstrates the various and diverse contexts in which knowledges, concepts, objects and practices work together to configure embryos and foetuses.

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LIVING BOOKS ABOUT LIFE
http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org

Living Books About Life (http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org) was launched by Open Humanities Press (OHP) (http://openhumanitiespress.org) in October 2011.

Funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), and edited by Gary Hall, Joanna Zylinska and Clare Birchall, Living Books About Life is a series of curated, open access books about life -- with life understood both philosophically and biologically -- which provide a bridge between the humanities and the sciences. Produced by a globally-distributed network of writers and editors, the books in the series repackage existing open access science research by clustering it around selected topics whose unifying theme is life: e.g., air, agriculture, bioethics, cosmetic surgery, electronic waste, energy, neurology and pharmacology.

Open Humanities Press is a non-profit, international Open Access publishing collective specializing in critical and cultural theory. OHP was formed by academics to overcome the current crisis in scholarly publishing that threatens intellectual freedom and academic rigor worldwide. OHP journals are academically certified by OHP’s independent board of international scholars. All OHP publications are peer-reviewed, published under open access licenses, and freely and immediately available online at http://openhumanitiespress.org.